Erik,

I have the primary Alligate Gateway installed on the same box as IMail/Declude, but on different ports.  My IMail doesn't actually host any real users, it's just a container for Declude and storage for the lowest scoring spam.  The idea is to dump as much illegitimate stuff as possible during the SMTP envelope through the use of the 'pre-scanning' gateway, and then do the heavy lifting with Declude.  The one-box solution saves money, and the gateway also saves money since it reduces the burden of heavy lifting by reducing the volume.

Matt



Erik wrote:
Matt, is your Delcude gatewayed?  Or is it running on the same server as
Imail?

-Erik


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 5:58 PM
To: Declude.JunkMail@declude.com
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Experience with 4.x


I indicated earlier that it looked like a relative 10% improvement 
(about the difference between 35% and 32% hourly average CPU 
utilization).  I would think that this comes primarily from not needing 
to start the old declude executable every time, and the improvement 
might be more substantial on a system with a overtaxed disk.  I don't 
think the code is any more efficient as far as actual scanning goes.  
Besides that, it's typically the virus scanners and external tests that 
eat up most of the CPU on a Declude system and not Declude itself, and 
those things haven't changed.

I'm guessing that it might perform much better when redlined though if 
you tweak it right.  I believed that old Declude when getting rammed 
with overflow seemed to not perform linearly with normal performance 
with free CPU, but instead dropped, probably due to having a lot of CPU 
wait time overhead (there's probably a more accurate term for this).  
The new Declude can be more effectively controlled so as to not bog down 
the system as much.  So performance here might be 2x or more when 
redlined under optimal conditions.  This effect would be maximized if 
Declude would tie launching threads to a CPU monitor instead of a fixed 
number with no real clue as to what is perfect under any particular 
situation.

Matt




Nick Hayer wrote:

  
Hi Matt,

So you see any substantive performance improvement over 2x?

-Nick

Matt wrote:

    
Jay,

It's not about moving along, it's about limiting the CPU to only
100%, or at least not piling it on when it gets there.  I could be 
wrong in assuming that 1 thread = 1 message (hopefully I will be 
corrected if so), but 30 average messages being processed at once 
will most definitely peg my processors, and adding more threads when 
you are at 100% will actually slow down performance.

Another note, not all systems are configured equally.  A vanilla
install of Declude would likely handle 4 times the number of messages 
that mine does since I run 4 external filters, two virus scanners, 
and something like 100 Declude filters (though they mostly get 
skipped with SKIPIFWEIGHT and END statements as they are targeted).  
Running a single virus scanner and RBL's is just a fraction of the 
load.  With my pre-scanning gateways blocking more than 90% of all 
traffic (about half of that is dictionary attacks and most of the 
rest is done with 'selective greylisting'), I can scale one server to 
handle over 20,000 addresses, possibly as many as 40,000 (doesn't 
host the accounts though), so despite the heavy config, it is optimized.

But back to the real topic...I'm just guessing that 30
messages/threads is the limit for my box, but I'm sure that it isn't 
as high as 80, though setting it at 80 would be of no consequence 
outside of a prolonged heavy load caused by something like a backup 
of my spool.  It would be a bigger mistake to set it too low.

Matt



Jay Sudowski - Handy Networks LLC wrote:

      
30 threads seems awfully low.  We set ours to 80 on a dual xeon box
with a separate drive for spool/logging and we move right along 
without any issues.

Thanks!
-----
Jay Sudowski // Handy Networks LLC
Director of Technical Operations
Providing Shared, Reseller, Semi Managed and Fully Managed Windows
2003 Hosting Solutions
Tel: 877-70 HANDY x882 |  Fax: 888-300-2FAX
www.handynetworks.com
________________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 3:25 PM
To: Declude.JunkMail@declude.com
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Experience with 4.x

Andrew,

Thanks for your notes and their history.

I'm using the following settings right now:
THREADS        30
WAITFORMAIL    500
WAITFORTHREADS        200
WAITBETWEENTHREADS    100
WINSOCKCLEANUP        OFF
INVITEFIX    ON
AUTOREVIEW        ON
There are a few reasons for trying these values.
THREADS 30 - I'm pretty confident that dual 3.2 Ghz Xeons and RAID
can only handle 30 threads with average messages.  In reality, one 
single message can spike the system to 100%, but these are 
uncommon.  I figure that if I open this up too wide and I am dealing 
with a backup or something, launching more threads when at 100% CPU 
utilization will actually slow the system down.  This was the same 
with 2.x and before.  There is added overhead to managing threads 
and you don't want that to happen on top of 100% CPU utilization.  I 
am going to back up my server later tonight to see if I can't find 
what the magic number is since I don't want to be below that magic 
number, and it would probably be best to be a little above it.

WAITFORMAIL 500 - On my server, this never kicks in, but if it did,
it wouldn't make sense to delay for too long because I could build 
up messages.  A half second seems good.

WAITFORTHREADS 200 - This apparently kicks in only when I reach my
thread limit; sort of like a throttle.  I don't want it to be too 
long because this should only happen when I am hammered, but it is 
wise not to keep hammering when you are at 100%.  Sort of a mixed 
bag choice here.

WAITBETWEENTHREADS 100 - I see this setting as being the biggest
issue with sizing a server.  Setting it at 100 ms means that I can 
only handle 10 messages per second, and this establishes an upper 
limit for what the server can do.   I currently average about 5 
messages per second coming from my gateways at peak hours, so I 
figured that to be safe, I should double that value.

INVITEFIX ON - I have it on because it comes on by default and I
don't know any better.  I know nothing about the cause for needing 
this outside of brief comments.  It seems strange that my Declude 
setup could ruin an invitation unless I was using footers.  If this 
is only triggered by footer use, I would like to know so that I 
could turn it off.  I would imagine that this causes extra load to 
do the check.

AUTOREVIEW ON - I have this on for the same reason that Andrew
pointed out.  When I restart Decludeproc, messages land in my review 
folder, and I don't wish to keep manually fishing things out.  If 
there is an issue with looping, it would be wise for Declude to make 
this only trigger say every 15 minutes instead of more regularly.
Feel free to add to this if you want.

Matt











Colbeck, Andrew wrote: I'd second that... on both the observed
behaviour and the request for documentation.

I'm attaching my highly commented declude.cfg as a reasonable 
sample.

Andrew 8)



________________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 10:36 AM
To: Declude.JunkMail@declude.com
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Experience with 4.x
David,

That did the trick.  I can't even see any messages in my proc folder
any more.  I might suggest adding your explanation to the comments 
in the file just in case others feel the need to turn this on like I 
did.  I recalled the issues from the list and I turned it on because 
I didn't want the possibility of DNS crapping out and the leakage 
that this would cause.

Here's a screen cap of what my processor graph looks like now:


Thanks,

Matt



David Barker wrote: The purpose of WINSOCKCLEANUP        ON is to 
reset the winsock, what
happens when using this setting is that when the \proc directory hit 
0 decludeproc will finish processing all the messages in the \work 
before checking the \proc again. As WINSOCKCLEANUP is to be used 
only by those who experience DNS issues I would suggest running your 
tests again with WINSOCKCLEANUP commented out and see how the 
behavior differs. Also having
the WAITFORMAIL to low can cause the CPU to process very high as it is
constantly checking the \proc I would suggest a minimum of 500-1000

David B
www.declude.com

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 8:12 PM
To: Declude.JunkMail@declude.com
Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Experience with 4.x

Darrell,

I put up two Windows Explorer windows side-by-side under normal
volume and the pattern was consistent where the proc folder grows 
while the work folder shrinks until the work folder hits zero at 
which point the proc folder empties out and everything lands in work 
and then the pattern repeats with proc growing while work shrinks.

My settings are as follows:

THREADS        50
WAITFORMAIL    100
WAITFORTHREADS        10
WAITBETWEENTHREADS    50
WINSOCKCLEANUP        ON
AUTOREVIEW        ON
INVITEFIX    ON

Matt




Darrell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

 
It's a faulty design that leaves more than half a server's CPU
capacity unused due to the mere fact that they wait for all threads 
to complete before moving in a new batch.
     I can't speak to what you see on your server, but that is not 
how it is running on my server.  I just double checked again to make 
sure I am not crazy, but as I watch the thread count on my server 
(decludeproc) the threads fluctuate between 7 - 30 ( threads 
currently set to 50).  It is not uncommon to see the threads move as 
follow: 11,8,10,7,15,....  While I was watching it I never seen a 
case where it went down low enough for the WAITFORMAIL setting to 
kick in.  Watching the proc/work directory you can see files moving 
in and out, but never really emptying out.  Its possible what I am 
seeing is an anomaly or maybe I am interpreting it wrong.

Maybe David can comment on this.

Darrell
--------------------------------------------------------------------
----

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